how do you like covers of your
songs? like the tubes' 'my head is my only house unless it rains'.

i thought, at first, that it was awfully
nice.

did you play harp with the tubes? [see
note at the end - teejo.]

i played on a thing called 'golden boy' and
they turned it way down. i also played soprano on 'cathy's clone'. i like
the girl who wrote it, i think she wrote a good song. i told her i really
liked what she had done and that i'd really play for her, and i played
it. i thought it would be on there, but again it was turned down,
way down. i don't want anyone to govern me. that i didn't like too
much.

what about 'alice in blunderland' by henry
kaiser's band 'monster island'?

well, that was originally done for elliot
ingber [winged eel fingerling]. i put together that composition
and gave him the complete freedom to play
whatever he wanted on the guitar, which i
thought he should get. you know, he never got it with frank [zappa -
t.t.]. he's really great. he wrote 'don't bogart that joint' (by
fraternity of man - ed.).

what else has elliot done?

well, right now he lives in
hollywoodacross the street from a
windows-darkened-up bookstore. you know, one of those places with the gynecology
shots and whatnot - trophies. he lives there on santa monica boulevard,
down the street from the 'pink pussycat' - now thére's a place -
and he just plays all the time. he'll play with me again.

he will?

he will. (but it didn't happen, after
all - t.t.) i think he's one of the greatest melodicists of the guitar
who ever lived. he's been a tremendous influence.

what's the deal
on the original 'bat chain puller'? is it different than this one, 'shiny
beast'?

oh, definitely. glen
kolotin was the engineer on this album and man, i think he's one of the
better living engineers. he did stravinsky's last album. on this album
you can hear everything. isn't that amazing? i wish on 'trout mask replica'
you could hear everything.

you weren't happy
with the way it came out?

well, the idea of being
able to do an album like that in that time was amazing. i was lucky to
have gotten it out. i was lucky that frank zappa gave me the opportunity
to get it out. how it was merchandised was disgusting, but i can't put
that on frank. what could he do about that? it's just business.

i mean, he's being
sued right now. you know what? he's locked out of one of the places he
owns. he's in a big lawsuit. not by warner brothers, but by an unmentionable
jerk. i don't even want to mention his name. i don't think the press should
have his name in it. i wouldn't want to give the unmentionable character
fuel of any kind. (the other flamingo in that fruit fight was herb cohen,
zappa's long-time business companion - t.t.)

did mary jane (eisenberg,
who performed dances to some of the songs - teejo) do her own choreography
for that?

she did that herself
and in about ten minutes. she got that stuff at a food store. she's good,
man. that is a great dancer. i think she's the best living dancer. the
truth has no patterns, but i think maybe she is the best. i know she sure
as hell can think. and that's the sixth time she has ever played maracas.
the sixth time! she's never been out with a band, never played an instrument.
man, that i find really uplifting.

she dug eric dolphy.
she did a piece that no one would ever do, to a thing that dolphy did that
was pretty far out. he was really hip. it was a thing called 'senor something'.
i can't remember the name of it. i knew dolphy. i hope he doesn't come
down and get me for this, because i can't recall the name of the tune.
probably because i write so many tunes, all of the time.

so she just came
along with bruce [fowler] pretty much?

yeah. she likes my
music.

everybody likes
your music.

i don't think everybody
likes my music. if everybody liked my music they wouldn't buy orange juice
from that damn woman we were talking about.

do you listen to
any new music?

well, anybody who's
going on at all now used to be a lot better. i was in england, and i played
a thing in france - a festival (fête du nouveau populaire de paris
on 19 november 1977, so a year earlier - teejo). there were tén
thousand people in the rain, and me under a thing where the rain didn't
hit me. i was feeling sorry for the people in the rain. things like that
are hard if you're at all feeling.

i apologized at least
twelve times, i probably bored everyone to tears. that's not good business.
god, that was terrible. it's wonderful to see people out in the rain, but
not with me under a canopy. do you know how cold it was that night? it
would freeze the fur on a fishing pole, i'll tell you that. contact lenses
would be frightening in that kind of cold. i think it must have been at
least ten below. [now, to someone living in the mojave desert any european
temperature is chilly of course - teejo.]

oh, ace and duce. i
like those guys. they seem to be among those people who have a hold. which
is why i did that. i was quite annoyed by the fact that he put 'blorp esette'
right in the middle of my drawing. i think he could have found some other
way to do that. he's a nice guy.

*

additional noteokay, let's see
what he means - teejo:whatever my fate
may be: i dare say that don is exaggerating

*

are you
familiar with the 'residents'(who
happen to have a track on that elpee, by the way - teejo)?

they're pretty damn
good. i like them, i think they're really quite good. but i don't have
much time to listen to anything. i'm doing this and doing that and training
this and training that and trying not to train anything. an artist is probably
the one who kids himself most gracefully. because somebody doing what i've
created in an awful responsibility... - puts me in a sort of jail.

does he just do that
constant beat? man, i hate that heartbeat being driven into my mind like
that. that, i think, has got to change. that's what all of the drum things
i've ever done have tried to do: to change that. because if that doesn't
change to some degree... - and i think it won't be changed by electronics
and i think that it won't be changed with mechanicals - that's why no electric
drums. they could just hook you right into 'general electric'.

what kinds of influences do you see on
your music?

none. never. you know why? because it would
be a distortion of the prism. you know, color distortion. i think that
an artist should be exactly what he is, or she is. i
don't think that influences...

but these days everyone takes in so much
information.i don't. there are books that i would love
to read, lóve to read. but i'm afraid
they would influence me, and that could stop me.